Women in Climate and Energy Fellowship Update
In September I joined EnergyLab’s Women in Climate and Energy Fellowship (WICEF), a three-month program helping women turn their clean energy and climate ideas into businesses through training, mentoring and community support. I’m one of 12 women in this year’s program — the 7th time it has run.
I applied for the Fellowship to continue my climate and energy transition learning journey, which started in Amsterdam in 2021 working for an NGO in support of community-led energy transition. My hope is to learn more about clean energy and climate tech in Australia, and currency and applicability of two major aspects of my previous work:
- That expert-led, technical solutions towards climate action lack deep democratic support and will inevitably fail to build popular consent, opening the way for those who for whatever reason oppose necessary action.
- An approach to energy transition that isn’t people-centred and responsive to local context will not lead to durable change.
Observations from near and afar
In Amsterdam, communities are increasingly empowered in leadership and governance for energy transition. The city’s energy system is transforming at the hands of its citizens. Leading the charge are the city’s 30+ energy communities, citizens who have stepped in to reclaim the energy system, investing their skills and resources to produce, sell and manage renewables: wind, solar and district heating. Most are small-to-medium size, localised projects, ranging from highly-localised solar projects to larger scale district heating projects.
Big caveat: the Netherlands has a historical tradition rooted in collective management. It’s a different place, with different systems and legacies. But why shouldn’t we look to other examples, and use these as inspiration for new creative arrangements that manifest new ideas and capacity for change?
In Australia, are we doing too much ‘doing to’ rather than ‘designing with’ communities when it comes to our energy future? Things I’m noticing:
Community push-back.
Going on news reports, communities are pushing back on hosting or adopting clean tech, with desire to have a say in sector transformation.
Language centres on ‘social license’.
Social license “…at its simplest… refers to the acceptance granted to a company or organisation by the community.” (The Ethics Centre, 2018). But such a thing can’t be easily bought or ticked off a list.
In general, “…energy transition talk seems socioculturally naive.” (Cameron Tonkinwise, UTS). Awareness campaigns for the public are not enough on their own for people to understand how renewable energy can benefit them but also how it might change their usage of energy in the home and for mobility. This can deepen mistrust, pushback, and further slow progress for change.
In other words, community uncertainty undermines social license for big projects, impacting our pace and ability to meet emissions targets, meaning climate goals slip further behind.
Job ads and sector chat lean to the technocratic.
People with technical skills in energy are in demand, as are community engagement officers who can work with — or perhaps placate — communities when big infrastructure plans land on their doorsteps and farm-gates. What complementary skills and mindsets are missing?
Lines of enquiry
I’m exploring two lines of enquiry currently:
- How clean tech might be designed, developed and integrated in ways that do not perpetuate existing inequalities or introduce new ones, acknowledging studies indicating that “…opportunities to incorporate energy justice are greatest at the earliest stages of the R&D continuum.” (Arkhurst et al. 2024). Put another way, how ‘energy justice’ might show up in the early stages of R&D in ways that make clean tech startups pay attention e.g. framed amongst narratives of growth, scaling and market maturity.
- What we can do in the next ten years in climate tech that future citizens would have reason to value (and clean techies to build for), inspired by the work of Coops et. al (2022), including how climate tech can get sensitive to longer timescales, and how it can work from a more radical ambition with an economic or societal model that is beneficial for both nature and people.
I’m interviewing people across the energy sector including retailers, startups, and community-led initiatives, and building a value proposition for some-future-thing as part of my Fellowship learning journey.
I’m also very lucky to have Laura Jones from the Australian National University’s Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program as my mentor, an experienced engineer that has led major projects including the Bruny Island Battery Trial, who brings diverse expertise in power systems, innovation, and business economics.
Themes standing out in conversations and readings to date:
- funding, capital, and business incentivisation
- financial accessibility for different household types/models
- geographic considerations e.g. urban vs regional, rural
- adaptation of new tech to old buildings
- digital literacy e.g. using tech for monitoring
- knowledge equity and information access for diverse groups
I’ll share more as the Fellowship progresses.
In the meantime, if you’re an ‘energy person in Australia’ and keen to share your experiences and perspectives on these topics, I’d love to hear from you! I am contactable at kate (at) matchboxstudio (dot) com (dot) au.
References
Arkhurst, Bettina K., Wendy Hawthorne, Isa Ferrall-Wolf, Katherine Fu, and Kate Anderson. 2024. “Incorporating Energy Justice throughout Clean-Energy R&D in the United States: A Review of Outcomes and Opportunities.” Cell Reports Sustainability 1 (2): 100018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crsus.2024.100018.
Coops, Femke. 2022. “Designing for Transitions and Transformations.” In . https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.897.
The Ethics Centre. 2018. “Ethics Explainer: Social License to Operate.” January 23, 2018. https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-social-license-to-operate/.
